The Letters
by ArrowandShield
Summary: A wild ride in a blue telephone booth with a maniac and a nympho in a great coat and there they were. 1943... Captainhawk! Asex!Clint. Straight!Steve.


**A wild ride in a blue telephone booth with a maniac and a nympho in a great coat and there they were. 1943...**

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**The Letters**

Clint shouldn't have been surprised that Steve decided to go back. He'd had a right to. Especially since it had been possible. That there had been a way back.

A wild ride in a blue telephone booth with a maniac and a nympho in a great coat and there they were.

1943.

Steve's joy was more than enough to make it worth it. They'd even been able to make it to New York. To the Stork Club. Right on time. Peggy was waiting. So were all the rest. The Howling Commandos, Howard Stark, hell even the Colonel.

All there, all looking worn and weary and sad into their drinks.

The mess the greeting had made of the club was fronted to the US Army, more than glad to have their icon and hero back. They'd torn the roof off the place. Steve had jumbled with way through enough dances that even he complained of being foot sore.

Clint, the Doctor and Harkness had played their parts. The two Torchwood associates had a real ball and danced and flirted with anything that breathed. Clint just fronted the tab and babysat. He didn't mind. Four hundred bucks went a long way in 1943 and he didn't mind spending it all that night.

They had rooms. In a nearby hotel. Very posh and luxurious and of course Clint, the Doctor and Harkness were asked to come along. Clint would have liked to refuse but the Doc and Jack were his ride back home…. Back to his own time… he had to go where they went. So an overnight in and elite hotel was going to happen one way or another. Especially since it seemed that Harkness had talked a couple of the Commandos out of their pants.

There were more than enough rooms, even with all the rowdiness that was hinted at for the night. The Colonel was quiet and sensible and offered the secondary bunk in his own room to the archer. Clint had gently declined, reasoning away that he wasn't due to sleep for another few days.

The reality of it was that even with his poor hearing he was far to close to where Steve had slipped into Peggy's room for the night.

He'd known right then for sure that Steve was going to stay. There as no doubt in his mind that this wasn't a visit or a chance to say good bye.

They had brought Steve home.

Clint accepted it but it made his stomach churn and roll and he needed to move, to get away and get air. So we slipped out of the hotel, onto the streets and walked through the New York of yesteryear. He walked all night, letting the chill air wrap around him and soak through his lungs and into his bones. He even scaled up to the roofs of some of the taller buildings he'd come across and looked out on the alien skyline for a long while.

It was late… possibly better to be called early… when he finally returned to the hotel the Doctor and a very satisfied looking Harkness were waiting.

So was Steve.

The Doctor and Harkness had ambled a head, uproarious and joyous and already making plans to return. Clint looked after them more than a little enviously.

"Will you come back?"

It was probably one of the hardest things in all the world for Clint to look up and meet Steve's eyes. To give him a small, broken little smile and shake his head, "I want to… I really do. But… it's probably not a good idea. You can't get back to what you're life with me hanging around."

Steve's blue eyes turned sad and almost a little sick but he nodded, understanding and knowing it to be true. Knowing the reality that Clint wouldn't be able to move on either if he came back.

The soldier opened his arms slightly and Clint folded himself into them. For the last time. He pressed his nose into Steve's shoulder and breathed in as deeply as he could, imprinting the scent on his mind and memory. Steve held him close, breathing in the archers scent as well.

Slowly and reluctantly Clint pulled away. He smiled sadly as he turned to follow the pair towards the Tardis. It was a true fight not to look back. Once he was dumped at home, in New York, in his own time his life felt... hollow... less.

It hurt.

The archer almost begged a ride back. SHIELD made for a distraction. Fury seemed to have taken pity on him and threw mission after mission onto the archer. Sending him out of the country, undercover, anything, everything.

It would end eventually. It would come to a point that there weren't any more distractions. Nothing to keep his mind off everything. Mind off Steve.

The first letter came three months after they took Steve back. The paper was old. Yellowed after years passing it by, but the ink had been carefully preserved folded up in the dark of the envelope addressed to Clint and written with a mailing date.

Steve had written him. Almost seventy years in the past the soldier had written him a letter to be delivered in Clint's present. Very Back To The Future. Clint wondered if that's were Steve had gotten the idea. They'd only watched it a few weeks before Steve had hitched a ride home.

The letter was ten pages long, and then another three of flash art sketches. He wouldn't admit it to anyone but he'd cried a little over it. Grieving the loss he hadn't yet.

Another letter was delivered a week later. Another eight pages.

Twelve the week after that.

It became his highlight. His hope. His line back to Steve. It was like the soldier was writing a journal only for Clint's eyes. He heard about everything. The fight in Europe, the end of the war, Peggy, the Commandos, travel, life, love, dreams, wishes, anything that struck the soldier's mind when he put pen to paper. It was a confessional for Steve in his hardest times dealing with Shell Shock and nightmares and the loss of the Commandos one by one over time.

Usually it was just sheets and sheets of written paper. Sometimes small packages of sketch books or trinkets or some of the medals that Steve was awarded, all wrapped in leather to preserve it through time. Items that were likely worth hundreds of thousands for their significance if not more, but completely priceless to Clint.

The archer had tried to write back time an again but it never felt the same. He tried video diaries or just photographs. Some way to preserve his own life for Steve somehow. All to failure. It just wasn't the same. He just waited each week for his letter to come. Each page carefully saved in an album, every trinket and gift saved into a metal box.

Things that Clint came back to everyday, things that Steve had touched. Things that made the archer's heart ache and burn and love Steve all the more from afar.

Clint came to expect his letters regularly and would practically hover at the door waiting for the mail carrier each time.

But then a week came that there was no letter. The archer's heart wavered painfully over the missed week but he assumed that Steve must have missed the date or that the letter may have been lost in transit. Surely there would be a few that would go missing.

But then another week went by without a letter. And a third...

Clint still waited at the door, waiting with a now nearly broken heart for the the hope of some contact with the past. He had scoured the history books but most mention of Steve passed into anonymity after the war... but then... so soon after there was Korea. Clint had no doubt that Steve would answer the call of his country. That he would go with all will and power to Korea and fight the fight there that he had fought in Europe and at home. If Steve had enlisted as a mere name, left his shield behind his name could have been lost to history. One of the many unnamed and unknown soldiers buried in mass graves and marked with smooth marble crosses.

Clint prayed it wasn't true. He waited at the door every week and hoped. But it stayed silent. The wood untouched.

A fourth week came and Clint wrung his hands raw, sitting cross legged at the door, waiting, hoping, breaking apart...

He'd cracked his skull on the counter scrambling to get up to grab the handle and yanked the door open before he was fully on his feet... his heart stopped...

"... Clint? Why... are you on the floor?"

"... Oh my god... you..."

"... Yeah. Yeah I'm home... sorry it took me so long. You'd think for guys like us it wouldn't be that hard to hitchhike to the future."

"God... Steve..."

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**A/N: All great couples go through moments of separation and strife. Just for people like Clint and Steve those separations are going to be a little more radical. But they'll always end up back together. **


End file.
